Elder Tanner Smith - Ghana Accra Mission

Hey Everyone!So this week has been really crazy! We had a lot of referrals in church this last Sunday and we were able to contact all of them by Wednesday and even give 4 of them baptism dates! The work is really progressing in Klagon and we have been super busy teaching new converts and new investigators. I think that we had a total of 8 baptism dates set with 6 of them in September. I heard that there would be a lot of baptism's here in Ghana, but holy cow I didn't know what to really expect until I started the work! Anyway, just as all these baptism were coming in I got a call on this last Thursday from my Mission President and he told me that I've been reassigned to be an Office Elder. I moved to the office the next morning, so I wasn't able to say goodbye to a lot of the members in Klagon. I was able to see a few of the ones who were very important to me though and I'll send pictures as well! I explained in my last email saying what Office Elders do so I won't go to in depth but basically the reason they moved me into the office so soon is because I can drive a manual and I know how to work with computers (That's just my guess actually). But the current Office Elder I'm with is Elder Zick and he's been in the office for about 9 months total during his mission, so he knows how to do things very well. He will be training me how to do everything before he leaves in 3 weeks. There is a ton to learn by then because after he's gone I have to train someone else who will be new to the office. There is a lot of work to be done and I'm excited. Being in the office is a lot different then being a normal proselyting missionary, so I will be learning a whole new number of skills and traits. To answer some of your questions, Elder Adyatu (my last companion) received his new companion the morning I was leaving. I believe his name is Brother Aidoo and he is a ward missionary from Ashaman. He has his mission call to Nigeria and he will be with Adyatu until the end of our transfer and when the new missionaries come in he will be a trainer in Klagon to one of them. He has a lot of work to do. I had him meet with all of the investigators and a lot of the members, so hopefully if he forgets some of the people he can rely on the members in the ward to help him out. There is one companionship in the office as Office Elders and then there are the two AP's. (Assistant to the President) We are with the AP's a lot of the day so it's cool being with Elder Effiong, so much. Elder Zick is from Southern California and he is the one training me and he is leaving in 3 weeks. He will just be training me how to be an Office Elder like how to do the different duties and such. The mission home is super nice and our bedroom has AC so it's really nice. Also we have a washing machine and a dryer and the shower has a water heater as well. It's pretty luxurious for Ghana. Elder Zick is a really smart guy and he knows how to use computers and knows the whole mission very well and how to get to places so that's one of the most important parts of my job is to know the mission really well because I'll be driving around it very often. I won't be able to go to the Temple very much because I'm super busy. The mission home is just down the road and the MTC is in Tema, not Accra but they are building the new MTC right now which should be done next year. I'll be driving a big van which is manual. The driving out here is really aggressive so I think I'll be okay, I don't think Mom would like driving here very much. Mornings are busiest time of the day for us so there is almost no time for study in the morning, we just find time to study when we don't have things to do through the day. I'm excited for this calling and it's been awesome getting to know the Mission President more while I've been here. He's a really awesome man and I'm excited to be with him more. I miss Klagon though, this Sunday was a girl named Joyceline's baptism and I'm upset that I missed it but I was able to get a picture from Elder Barnes back in Klagon so I'll send that as well. Anyway thats about it for now! I love you all and you're all in my prayers!

So I know that it's Friday, but I got a call yesterday afternoon from my Mission President (President Heid), and he called me to be an Office Elder and that I'll be leaving early the next day to come to the office. I was very surprised by this call because I still haven't finished my training (12 weeks or 2 transfers is a typical new missionary training period) and they're moving me to work in the Mission Office. Since the current Office Elder (Elder Zick) is leaving in 3 weeks, they wanted me to come and be trained by him so that when he leaves I can train another Elder to be an Office Elder. If you don't know what an Office elder is, they basically just drive around the whole mission and bring things to people like mail, supplies, etc, and just help out with whatever the Mission President wants. I'll be driving a lot so it's a good thing I got my IDP (International Drivers Permit) back home! Also transfers are super busy for us because we will be picking up new missionaries from the MTC and bringing missionaries going home to the Airport. Also, I won't get a lot of time to do proselyting, I think we have about 4 hours of total proselyting time total in a week, but Elder Effiong (current AP and first companion) told me he's only gone proselyting once while he's been AP, so it might be different. I'll be staying at the mission home with the Mission President, the AP's, and us, the Office Elders. So I'm once again with Elder Effiong! I'll take a picture of my companion soon so I can send it on Monday but his name is Elder Zick and I think he's from Southern California. I wasn't able to say goodbye to really anyone in Klagon, since it so sudden, but I was able to see a couple of really important members to me so next Monday i'll send pictures of them.

So this week went pretty good. We have been making it a big focus to see all of our recent converts at least once a week. While we were at Prince's house (one of our recent converts) he was telling us a little about his life before he moved to Ghana and joined the church. He is a Nigerian and just recently moved to Ghana about 3 years ago. He lived a really rough life in Nigeria where him and his brother would get in a lot of very serious fights with people and he was put in many situations when he almost lost his life. One of his jobs was working on a drilling ship. The ship would go and drill for oil out in the ocean and he told us of an experience where while he was working some pirates came trying to take all that the ship had. Just think about the movie Captain Philips because he said they were a lot like that, but since the crew wasn't American no one really cared that much it's just part of the job. He told me that we just did everything that the pirates said, he saw eleven people get shot and killed that day and then one of them hit him in the face with the butt of their gun and knocked him into the ocean. He never went back to work again, and after that day he told himself that God wanted him for a reason on this earth. He was a very devoted roman catholic until he saw a couple of missionaries about a year ago. He was baptized on august 9th and just received his first calling in the ward as seminary teacher. He is an awesome guy and has one of the best conversion stories that I've ever heard. He is one of the people that really helps me throughout my mission because of where he has been and what he has become. I know that the Lord has a plan for all of us and he will make anything he asks us to do possible if we are faithful to him. So anyway that's my spiritual little thought.

This Thursday we had a Zone conference in Tema MTC where there were 4 different zones in our mission. The mission president was there as well as my mission father elder Effiong. I got to see everyone that was in my district in the mtc as well and see how they are doing. Elder Whiting was the one who got really sick and went to the hospital because he ate a Snail at a members house. LOL but anyway it was really nice seeing all of them. The zone conference was nice and we watched a couple of videos about the light of Christ and revelation by Elder Bednar. Also Our Nungua zone leaders both left this week. Elder Chihoski was a missionary in Liberia before ebola and now they sent him back to Liberia so It was just Elder Hatch and then Elder Hatch got transferred that day to go back to one of his old area's for the remainder of this transfer. It's not common for someone to be transferred like this but there were a lot of reasons for it so our zone was out of zone leaders. So President heid decided to combine the Tema zone and the nungua zone to make one mega zone. It's a huge zone and Probably until the end of this next transfer It will stay this way. There are a lot of missionaries leaving this next transfer, about 22 missionaries and then there are even more coming in the same week. I think someone told me there were almost 30 missionaries coming in. My district leader told me that he told my zone leaders that i'll be ready to train when they come in as well so who knows! There are a lot of young missionaries with leadership positions so I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up training. I feel like I kind of am already with my companion now so this might have been a pre-training for training set up by mission president! Anyway that was about it for this week! Also I thought i should mention that when I came out for my mission I weighed 240 lbs and I weighed myself last Tuesday and I was 210 lbs, in just two months!! Wow!Love Elder Smith

Q&A from Dad:

Tanner:I heard that I can get a really nice camera for 300 cedis (about 77 dollars) One of the elders in my apartment (Elder Lafo) will buy my camera for 100 cedis since he doesn't have a camera. I can get things really cheap here. I'm planning on buying some shoes at the market and my companion said that he can get them for 50 cedis and they are very nice leather shoes, so I would like to get those as well. The subsistence we get from the mission is 360 cedis for every 4 weeks and its really low especially for white people. We buy everything for a lot more money because at the market they won't lower prices for us even if we know how much they should sell for. So I've been having to use a little bit of the personal money for food.Dad:We love pictures so if you can take more pics that would be great. You should have your companion buy all the food if he can get the food cheaper.

Tanner:He tries but if I'm with him then it doesn't happen. Even today we went on exchange so that the two african missionaries would go to the big market to buy things because if they see us white missionaries they will put the price way way way up.

Dad:Should we also send our emails by mail, so that you will have time to read them at home at night instead of just quickly at the Internet Cafe?

Tanner:I would like that! I still have a couple of the letters that I printed off at the MTC and read them often, so yeah you guys should do that.

Tanner:I'm already excited for the end of my mission so that i can buy a ton of souvenirs because they are way way cheap here even if you're white.

Dad: I would be excited to come and pick you up when you are finished and haul some of those things back home, but I am a little worried about the food.

Do parents come over and pick up missionaries there?

Tanner:Hahahahaha Yeah I don't think you would like the food at all but I'd make sure you would just have like rice and stew so it wouldn't be bad. I haven't seen any parents come out to pick up missionaries but I'm sure you could.

Dad:So are all your baptisms on track for Sept even with Elder Effiong leaving? I think you said that you had 3 or 4 committed to Sept?

Tanner:Probably only two will happen in September now. Two of them haven't been serious about coming to church but they would be in October, if not this month plus we met like 3 yesterday that want to be baptized, so October will be a really good month.

Dad:That is really exciting to have so many interested people. In most of the world they only get a few baptisms a year. What a blessing. Do most of them stay active in the church or is the activity rate really low?Tanner:We have 17 baptisms in our ward this year and I think 14 are active but two others make it about 2 times a month.

Dad:Also, how is the language? Can you know understand their English? And are you picking up much of the native language? Does your companion understand any of the native languages?

Are they splitting your ward because it is too big for the building?

Tanner:I'm picking up some of it but it's alright because I’m doing a lot better with their language and I learned to just not stress out about it, so its all okay.

They are splitting two wards to make 3 and mostly because some people have to travel a long distance to come to our ward but our ward building is also really small.

The picture is of me and Elder Hatch my old zone leader. He was a way cool guy. We took a picture before he left.

Hey everyone!This week was my first week with my new companion Elder Adyatu. He is from Uganda and has been out on the mission for a little longer then one year. He is very different from Elder Effiong, he is very laid back and relaxed and loves to cook as well. This week I made my first tomato stew and I think I did very good! I'm getting a lot better at making the type of food out here and I'm enjoying it more and more every week. Today we went to Ashaman to play the zone there in futbol. We also played basketball there and it was really fun. There was a huge transfer of new missionaries coming in this week, about 26 new missionaries. Our zone (Nungua) has two new missionaries, one from Salt Lake and one from England. They are really cool people as well. Ashaman has one of the biggest markets in Ghana, if not the biggest and you can buy things for very cheap. I bought some sunglasses for 8 Cedi's (about two dollars). You can also buy a speaker for music there for about 12 cedis. I bought a flash drive last week and put a lot of Mormon tablenacle choir on it. Also music like Enya and Kenny G have been approved so i got that music as well. I'm using a DVD player for the music now but we only get that during training to watch the training videos so I want to buy a speaker soon as well.This week went better then I was expecting. I was stressed out because I still don't know a lot of my area and yet I have to be the senior companion in a way, but It went a lot better then I was expecting. We were able to meet a lot of members and since Elder Effiong is gone I'm all they know so they are a lot more nice to me now! Anyway, one cool meeting we had was we were just walking around meeting investigators and one of our investigators wasn't home so I brought my companion to a members place and when we got there, there was a man reading the Book of Mormon and the member said that he has questions for us. He had a lot of questions about temples so we taught him about temples. He was very interested and so we decided to invite him to be baptized next month. He accepted and told us that if God answers his prayers he wants to join the church sooner! Anyway after we left the member told us it was a sign from God that we came because the man just showed up not 5 minutes before asking her questions. I didn't think much of deciding to go over to this specific members house, but now that I look back it was quite a blessing for us and this man! Last Saturday a missionary in my apartment got sick, his name is Elder Lafo and he is from Ethiopia. He told me he has never been sick in his life before and thought he was going to die. He woke me up by turning on the lights in the middle of the night and I sat up all night with him. He told me he wanted to die and he had to go to the hospital immediately. I told him that since he's never been sick before he is just experiencing it for the first time and that he'll be fine. The next morning he was feeling 100% better and was able to go to church. It was pretty funny to see how people react to illness when they've never had it before. I was exhausted on Sunday because of this though. It was a real struggle to stay awake in the meetings and so after church we went back to the apartment so I could take a quick nap. That quick nap turned into a 3 1/2 hour nap. I feel bad because there were things we could have done but I really needed the sleep after the long night. I don't have many pictures this week, but I will send a picture of my new companion! Also i'm still losing weight and everyone thinks that I'm starving myself out here lol. (only partially true) but because of this I have gotten all of my clothes tailored to be smaller. LoveElder Smith

Questions from Dad and answers from Tanner:Dad:You look like you are now the muscle in the companionship. He is a small but happy looking guy. You are looking more trim and fit. The weight loss looks good on you. Did you only tailor your pants? Probably not your shirts?

Tanner:Yes, all of my shirts as well. That was the most important thing because they were way to big for me before coming out.

Dad:So do you come back to the apartment and have lunch for the break?

Tanner:Yes, he's definitely not Elder Effiong but he's still a good teacher. He just likes to take a long break in the middle of the day.

Dad:Uganda? I thought you said Uruguay in South America? Forget the sesta comment and my companion was from South America. So he is African as well? Good.

Tanner:Yeah sorry he is African. He and Elder Lafo from Ethiopia also ran from our apartment to the Nungua Elders apartment. It's about 10 miles they came home and Elder Lafo was complaining about his foot hurting for like 4 days

Dad:Do you have four in your apartment? Who is the District Leader? Did either of the other two in the District get moved? What are there names and where are they from?

Tanner:Our district is the Klagon district. The district leader is Elder Barnes from North Carolina, his companion is Elder Lafo from Ethiopia, and then my companion and I. They are splitting our ward soon into two wards, so the other elders will be moving soon to another apartment.

Dad:So you all live together now? And soon they will be moving out of the apartment to another apartment? Do you have a shower?

Tanner:Yes we have a shower as well it's only cold though and it doesnt work when power is out because our pump won't work. But yeah there area is a bit away so probably in a month or two they will move